My, How the World Has Changed, continued

2/26/2019

At 77 I am remembering things that used to be commonplace but that my children and grandchildren have never seen.

If you were really sick the doctor would come to your house for $10.

A boy who went to school without a pocket knife was lacking in status. Displaying a new knife was an occasion.

Cap pistols

Push mowers, which required real effort but no gasoline or constant adjustment.

Howdy-Doody

Tex Ritter and Gene Autry (but not Roy Rogers who was from Iowa and not a real cowboy).

Saturday serials

Sleeping on a pallet on the floor with cousins when families visited

Buttermilk

Ironing boards and the smell of freshly ironed stuff

Ice cream that you had to crank a handle for

Kids allowed to ride the fire trucks on holidays

German lugers and Jap bayonets brought back by veterans

Atomic bomb drills in school. We did not realise how stupid they were.

10 cent bus fare

Honour system newspaper racks

Polio patients and iron lungs. We engaged in massive battles of fly-swatting on the theory that flies had something to do with the epidemic.

A real barber shop instead of a unisex beauty parlor.

The sweet singing from a country Southern Methodist church.

When there was only one family of immigrants in town and they were refugees from Communism, pleasant and interesting, and thankful to be here.

2 Comments

Robert M. Peters

2/27/2019 07:19:06 am

Riding in the back of Uncle Clyde's (not Clyde Wilson) pickup truck.

Going with parents on a Sunday drive and visiting with folks sitting on their front porches, maybe two or three visits and afternoon, drinking coffee, lemonade or Coke.

Killing and processing a hog on a cold November day.

Eating on the wash bench with my cousins while the adults ate at the big table, noting that we ate what the adults ate.

Conversations with the milkman, the paper boy, the coffee man, the laundry man when they delivered or collected.

Graveyard workings with stories about ancestors and with lots of food, none of the latter "fast."

Church when hymns with deep theological meaning were sung.

Eating Granny's apple tarts.

Playing with my home-made cars (spools and wood blocks) under Grandma's house with the chickens.

Sitting on Grandma's front porch with Uncle Julius; he spit tobacco into the yard, and I spit prune pits into the yard. Grandma cleaned out a tobaccos can for me and put prunes in it. The activity kept me happy and "regular."

Watching for the first signings of "tabler worms" on a catalpa tree; the signs were little moon bites in the leaves. We fished with the worms; and we hung them over our lips for mustaches. Girls let them hang off their ears as ear ornaments.

Getting into the movies at a Saturday matinee for a dime which we had "earned" by picking up coke bottles.

Michael Martin

2/27/2019 08:26:30 am

I'm only 27, but I've lived in Charleston SC my whole life. I can remember being a small child and riding down the main roads, which were single lane at that time, and seeing deer running and laying along the side. It was almost like they played next to the highway because life was a little slower then.

Now all the roads are expanded, packed with people in a hurry, amid streetlights and stop lights everywhere. Just recently, they started going up I-26 from Charleston, and just behind Summerville have been tearing down trees for the next town they're building - "Nexton."

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

My, How the World Has Changed, continued

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